☕️ AMD's $5 Billion Acquisition Keeps Fierce Rivalry Between NVIDIA Going

The rivalry in AI between Nvidia and AMD continues at full steam ahead as the latter acquires big-time US server builder ZT Systems for almost $5 billion to give it a leg up in the race. Other key takeaways include:

• OpenAI throws a wrench into the plans of an Iranian election influence operation abusing ChatGPT

• Donald Trump faces backlash from Swifties for using AI deepfakes to imply that Taylor Swift and her fans endorse him

• iOS illustration app Procreate sees widespread praise from fans for its recent definitive anti-AI stance

Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI!

AMD laid out its plans to acquire server builder ZT Systems for $4.9 billion in cash and stock

On Monday, long-time Nvidia rival AMD recently announced its plans to acquire US-based ZT Systems for $4.9 billion. The deal would be paid 75% in cash, with the remainder covered in AMD stock. With the deal expected to close in the first half of 2025, AMD is hot on Nvidia's trail by expanding its portfolio of artificial intelligence chips and hardware. On the server manufacturing side of ZT Systems, however, AMD plans to sell it, as it has no plans of competing with companies like Super Micro Computer.

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What exactly does ZT Systems bring to AMD?

AMD states that acquiring ZT Systems will help the company string together vast numbers of chips by optimizing the makeup of its server systems. The acquisition will also aid AMD in quickly testing and rolling out its latest AI GPUs on a scale similar to the likes of cloud computing giants, such as Microsoft, according to company CEO Lisa Su. It was also noted that of ZT Systems' 2,500 employees, AMD aims to retain about 1,000 of them after the deal is closed.

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OpenAI hammers down an Iranian election influence operation leveraging ChatGPT

OpenAI has recently struck down a cluster of ChatGPT accounts associated with an Iranian influence operation targeting the US presidential election. The operation created AI-generated articles and social media posts, although it appears to have had limited reach. The company's investigation benefited from a Microsoft Threat Intelligence report, identifying the group, named Storm-2035, as part of a broader campaign to influence US elections. Storm-2035 imitated news outlets by using ChatGPT for content creation and engaged in polarizing messaging on social media.

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Trump reposts AI-generated images implying Swifties endorsing him and VP Kamala Harris being a communist

Former President Donald Trump recently turned the Swifties furious after having posted deepfake AI images of them and Taylor Swift on Truth Social endorsing him. This sparked fierce backlash among fans who scrutinized Donald Trump for his continued use of deepfake imagery to twist the narrative. Along with that were more fake AI photos attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, depicting her in front of a crowd bathed in communist red, further adding to the pile.

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Procreate sees widespread praise from the creative community following the company's anti-AI pledge

Procreate, a popular iOS illustration app, recently ​announced a definitive anti-AI stance in an X/Twitter post​, letting many digital illustrators breathe a sigh of relief. Company CEO James Cuda stated that they are "not going to introduce any generative AI into our products" and that "I don't like what's happening to the industry, and I don't like what it's doing to artists," likely referring to employment concerns and non-consensual use of artists' work. The sentiment between artists seems quite clear: creativity is made, not generated.

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Salesforce debuts its latest suite of open-source multimodal models dubbed xGen-MM

The xGen-MM (or BLIP-3) suite is Salesforce's latest venture into generative AI, comprised of open-source multimodal AI models that combine text, images, and other data types to advance visual language understanding. A paper published on arXiv by the Salesforce AI Research team details the xGen-MM framework, which includes pre-trained models, datasets, and code for fine-tuning. Available on GitHub, the models are designed for complex tasks like answering questions about multiple images and are optimized for various purposes, including safety.

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AI unicorn startup ElevenLabs makes its Reader app available to the global audience

ElevenLabs announced that it has launched its Reader app globally, which converts text content from a variety of text documents into audio in 32 languages. Originally released in June in the US, UK, and Canada, the app supports various text formats and offers voices in languages like Portuguese, Spanish, and Japanese. ElevenLabs also provides an API for dubbing and text-to-speech, and the app's Turbo v2.5 model enhances text-to-speech quality and speed. The roadmap for future updates currently includes offline support and audio snippet sharing.

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Tech giant Amazon to swoop chip maker Perceive and its employees for $80 million in an all-cash deal

A recent filing indicates that Amazon is ready to acquire chip maker and AI model compression company Perceive for $80 million in an all-cash deal. Set to close by year-end, the acquisition will integrate Perceive's team into Amazon's Devices & Services division to enhance its AI and edge technology capabilities, as Perceive specializes in AI technology for edge devices. This move aligns with Amazon's broader strategy to boost device performance and expand its AI offerings, with most of Perceive's 44 employees expected to join Amazon after the acquisition.

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Small businesses are tapping into generative AI to accelerate growth and attempt to keep up with industry bigwigs, but challenges remain. Learn how AI technology is transforming startups and what it means for their future success.

Unreasonably Effective AI with Demis Hassabis (52-min watch)

The world has caught on to artificial intelligence in a big way, and Google DeepMind CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis and Professor Hannah Fry talk about the recent explosion of interest in the technology, the "unreasonable effectiveness" of chatbots, and the "unexpected" emergence of conceptual understanding and abstraction in recent generative models.